


the sun don't shine (but it never did)

by spiderboyneedsahug



Series: Spider-Man... has depression [1]
Category: Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Depression, Hurt Peter Parker, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Peter Parker Has Issues, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, References to Depression, Worried May Parker (Spider-Man), let's just get that out the way, let's just uhhhhuhuhh, low key inspired by my depression lmao, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-23
Updated: 2019-01-23
Packaged: 2019-10-15 05:27:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17522744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spiderboyneedsahug/pseuds/spiderboyneedsahug
Summary: It's kinda hard to not get bogged down when you're constantly in a crime bombarded city and, you know, you have a life outside of crime fighting.





	the sun don't shine (but it never did)

**Author's Note:**

> so this is like... just a vent? i needed to vent because i just felt so empty and hjjj
> 
> that is, i did. in the past. but sometimes my mood dips and hhhhhere have a series featuring a depressed peter parker (and eventually, him getting help)
> 
>  
> 
> title inspired by bring me the horizon's happy song

Every now and then, it creeps up on Peter. 

 

Lethargy. That’s it. Just complete lethargy, nothing more, nothing less. He’ll go to sleep on a good day, mind warm and ready to tackle his next challenge, and then he’ll go to sleep. And then he wakes up. And when he does, everything’s slow. And cold. The world moves ridiculously slowly. So does he. His muscles burn at the simplest exertion. He always wakes up early on these days, long before the sun peeks over the horizon. Darkness bleeds over the tops of buildings. Or, he’s pretty sure it does. Sitting up to check is a task he can never complete. Peter blinks. It’s slow. The movement in itself takes forever. He doesn’t want to move. His bed is warm, and it’s comfortable and effortless. He thinks of getting up, getting ready for school — and  _ that  _ leaves him drained, eyes burning, lids pulling down. He’s so tired. He can’t sleep. Slowly, Peter’s chest expands. He exhales. 

 

_ Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.  _ Each tap lasts forever. 

 

He doesn’t want to move. His stomach gurgles loudly, cramping so bad he nearly tears up. Peter tiredly blinks in response. He doesn’t want to move, not to eat, not to drink and soothe his parched throat… he’s too exhausted to sleep. He’s too tired to even blink. The thought of completing the motion is insurmountable. He desperately wants to fade out of existence to rest. He just wants to disappear. He can’t do school. Not today. He wants to call in sick. He can’t even force his own thoughts to move along at a pace faster than the speed they go at now. He’s starving. His stomach growls. It’s dark in his room, not even a slit of light pouring in. He can hear the streets of Queens beneath him. His eyes burn from not blinking, but he can’t find the energy to close them again. Being hungry but not being able to get out of bed… he just feels awful inside. He wants to cry. That’s what the deep, aching, raw emotional cavern in his chest is —  it’s pain. Sadness. Guilt. He wants to cry, but he just… finds himself unable to. 

 

What’s the use. 

 

It takes hours to gather the energy to do a task as simple as rolling out of bed. He hits the floor harshly, knocking the air from his lungs. Peter stays there. His limbs are impossible weights, his thoughts feel heavy. There’s no way he’s gonna be able to go in to school today, not when standing is a task too monumental to complete. Thirty minutes (ish) is the time it takes for Peter to numbly gather himself and stand. He can’t feel his body. It’s pins and needles all over. His head spins just from standing. The world doesn’t seem to want to stay in place around him, and he really, really isn’t going to be able to traverse it when he’s unsteady on his feet, wobbling dangerously to the bathroom to make himself presentable. He’s met by black-ringed eyes, pale skin. Gaunt eye sockets. Floppy hair. His expression is one of complete exhaustion, eyes drooping. 

 

Splashing water over himself with freezing arms doesn’t help at all. The wool of his sweater scratches when he pulls it over himself. It feels too tight, he feels like he’s being suffocated. Peter sluggishly blinks. His bag feels heavier than it has the right to. He stumbles out of the apartment, only just managing to pull the last of his clothes on neatly. May’s at work. Usually seeing May makes these mornings easier. His bag is slung over a shoulder, and he’s forgotten breakfast. 

 

He’s not hungry anyway. 

 

The walk takes a small eternity, and Peter finds himself quietly wishing he could have seen May this morning. Her hugs usually help him ground himself in his senses a little more; make him feel a little more real. No such luck. Almost-robotic footsteps are his companion on the journey, sending jolts up his body each time. He doesn’t try to avoid barging shoulders as the crowd grows denser; he just lets himself be knocked around, legs dead set on getting into school. There’s too many voices all at once, even with his headphones on and blasting music at their loudest. The sound makes his head hurt. It’s itchy; he wants to scratch at his brain until it stops being painful and empty. His movements are mechanical and slow when he grabs books from his locker; so much so that Ned has to steer him to their first class. Peter stumbles, finds himself blinking rapidly to refocus his eyes. Nothing changes. He’s tired. His notes on the subject — which one? — are bad, scruffy, inefficient. What’s the point, anyway?

 

_ “Pssst.  _ Peter.” Ned harshly whispers. Peter looks over slowly. There’s a notebook full of hastily scrawled words staring back at him. The message is obvious. 

 

_ You can copy mine.  _

 

Ned did this the first time he’d been like this. Peter finds tension uncoiling in his chest. He slumps forward. Staying upright had been exhausting, too. Flash looks at him oddly, a dying smirk on his expression. Peter might almost say the other boy looks surprised by his complete lack of energy. 

 

He doesn’t care. 

 

The class ticks on. Scratching his pen across the paper becomes an immense task, too. The words on the board blur. They don’t make sense. His eyes burn. He can’t stop not blinking. He can’t focus. 

 

When it comes to it, he skips eating at lunch. Ned pushes Peter’s bag forward. It doesn’t matter, the bag. Peter finds a mark on the table and stares intently at it. It doesn’t change. It’s almost in the shape of a little star, asymmetrical pointed tips pointing all across the cafeteria. People move, and chatter, and eat and write and type in the room. Peter just stares at this little smear on the table. He can’t focus on anything else. His eyes won’t move or stop everything else from blurring away into obsolescence. He finds it’s too loud and there’s too much happening at once for his senses to focus today. There’s too much noise, so his eyes unfocus slightly to make room to deal with the overload. But he needs to be able to see, so there isn’t any room in his brain to cope with the rapidly-growing-painful ache blossoming in his skull. 

 

The lunch bell rings and crowds run to their next classes. Peter can’t help but feel he’s being left behind. Everything’s moving so fast, and he’s moving- 

 

So slow. 

 

His footsteps drag on the way to his next class. Clumsy. Unfocused. Ned is nearly carrying him. 

 

When a teacher berates him for slipping into a daze in class, he meets their eyes. They’re annoyed, concerned, even-

 

And he can’t bring himself to care about it. 

 

They know about Ben. They know why he gets like this, which is probably the only reason he doesn’t get sent to a detention but instead is issued the classes work to do in his spare time. He keeps his head hidden by his arms for the remainder of the day, papers stacking up in his bag. He’s got too much to do, he can’t even  _ eat  _ without growing tired. He doesn’t speak up with paper after paper being thrust at him as time drags by. 

 

He’s much too tired for that. 

 

He keeps his eyes down when the final school bell goes. It hurts his ears, but right now, just about everything does. He’s exhausted, and he’s got so much to do in the next few days with so little energy to do it…

 

Surprisingly, he isn’t shoved down the school’s front steps today. In fact, Ned  _ and  _ MJ are both at his sides as if they’re trying to stop that from happening. He wants to show his thanks, but he can’t get his tired eyes to focus on anything other than the dull, gray world waiting to swallow him whole. The tingling in his head kicks up a split second before he hears a quiet shout, and-

 

It’s rare that May finishes work in time to collect Peter from school. Thank god for small miracles, though — he can see her standing in front of a taxi that’s waiting outside waits outside. He’s greeted with the hug he so desperately needed this morning but the cold in him doesn’t die away, no, it remains, persistent, clinging to his bones like a parasite. May tenses beneath him at his complete lack of response; pulls away from him to look him in the eyes. She cradles his face. He leans into the touch, eyes closing. He’s so tired. She sighs an unhappy breath before slipping into the car, patting the seat next to her. He climbs inside, numb. The driver doesn’t try to speak to them; that’s probably for the best.

“Peter? Baby, are you okay?” Her voice is so quiet and tender, and her eyes are concerned to the point where he wants to cry -- that is, if he could have really  _ felt  _ the sadness welling up in him. It feels more like a ravenous, empty void right now.

“I’m fine.” He whispers, empty eyes meeting sparkling, panicking ones.

 

He’s not.

 

He tries to sleep on the taxi journey back, but his senses won’t allow room for unconsciousness with the vehicle vibrating beneath him. May tries to talk to him, to pry him out of this shell, but he finds he can’t give answers worth more than a few words at a time. It exhausts him and he just… can’t. She seems to understand, though, because she just holds his too-cold hands in her own and keeps trying, anyway. He appreciates it. He really does.

 

When he gets home, he drops his bag lifelessly at the foot of his bed and collapses onto the plush surface of it. Numbly, his fingers curl into the fabric, tired brown eyes watching the material ripple and bend. His eyes close. He’s so tired, but… he can’t sleep. What kind of cruel irony is that? He can hear May clattering around; it’s almost relaxing in its familiarity. But he can’t force the tension from his body, can’t force the vacuum out of his lungs and shock his body back into feeling real. So, with all the grace of a puppet with no master, Peter stumbles upright and drags his suit out of his bag. Pulling it on is like pulling on a second skin, but the stark contrast is that, even as Spider-Man, he can’t feel any energy in him. None at all.

 

He hugs May goodbye, tugs on his mask, and jumps off the building. He’s close to smacking straight into the asphalt of the ground when he shoots his web and is snapped into the open skies. The fresh air is somewhat exhilarating, under layers of apathy, but Peter just feels cold. Tired. Empty. Even when the first crime of the night strikes, a robbery, he’s lacklustre at best and downright terrible at worst at doing his job. The whole patrol is hard — he nearly lets the bad guys get away in the end after he only just sabotages them, but he can’t make his body move any faster than it already is. He can’t. He can’t. He’s thrown through a window by some disproportionately strong guy, but he doesn’t move fast enough to stop it when normally, he could have dodged it easily. The glass scratches at his back when he slams into the floor. Slowly, with a frown, Peter rolls onto his side and slumps upright. There’s glass in his palm, and his gloves are nearly shredded from repetitive and numerous impacts. Against his rationality, he presses his finger down on the sharp tip of the glass and watches a bead of blood well up. It stings. 

 

Peter jolts back into himself, horrified, and throws the glass away from himself. He didn’t know what that was, why he did that, what just happened, he’d just… it’d just… Peter shakes his head, perhaps a little harshly, and sluggishly stands up to rejoin the fight. They obviously didn’t expect him to get back up. He didn’t really expect himself to, either. He’s completely on autopilot as he dodges hits and webs the guys up, and before he knows it, he’s observing the cops apprehending the guys. He nods to himself, exhausted, and stumbles back to his apartment with none of his usual grace. He peels off the suit roughly and stumbles onto his bed, sinking into the mattress and curling the comforter around himself like a cocoon.

 

When he goes to sleep, he can’t help but be scared of the terrified curiosity at how the blood had welled up after that amount of pressure. How his tiredness, his sadness, his anger had leaked out with that blood, replaced by curiosity. 

 

How he’d thrown away the glass he’d pressed into himself because he knew there would be a time where he wouldn’t be able to resist the urge to let his pain spill out. 

**Author's Note:**

> hate to admit it, but that last part with the glass shard may have actually been,,, a kind of thing i had done? i threw it away because i knew i'd go back to it eventually if i didn't. so like. this is cheesy as all fuck but please, if you're thinking about harming yourself / are harming yourself, please talk to someone / me about it?? it sucks to go through that alone. i know first hand how much it sucks. so just. rant at me in the comments or whatever.
> 
> i'm in a much better place than i was when this incident first happened though, so. don't worry!! my mental health is actually pretty solid!! this is just my old angst projecting so there is literally no need to worry about me if you are jfsjkdf


End file.
